Interview Pete Hines: Oblivion delivered what was promised

[tunguska]

It is a sneaker, because combat is entirely optional, and even forbidden on the highest difficulty level.

If they wanted to invent their own genre they could at least have come up with a better name for it. Sneaker just sounds silly to me. Would 'hider' have been any better? What about a 'shadow' game? That also doesn't sound very good. Maybe a 'stealth' game? That sounds better to me. And anyway, the Thief games were really the only ones that would fit into that genre. If it is a real genre I think it needs to be considered a sub-genre of action games.

I don't buy the idea that an action game isn't an action game just because you don't have to kill anyone (although I did all the time). Did Donkey Kong involve combat? Or Frogger? Those are considered action games. Or arcade games, which is really just a sub-genre of action games. Could they have invented their own genres? They could have said, "Don't call it an action game. It is a ground breaking new form of play called a jumping game." Both games did involve jumping. Should pac-man have had its own genre? The 'eating' genre? Sneaking should, IMO, just be considered one aspect of an action game. Hell, that was my favorite style of play when I used to play FPSs. I'd creep up to a corner and just sort of lean around, looking in either direction.

In Castle Wolfenstein you could sneak up on guards, get them to put up their hands and take all their ammo and weapons so that all they could do was run around and yell at you in German. It took some sneaking to be able to do that, but it was still an action game. I used to go around in that game with just a knife and take out guards with machine guns by sneaking up on them. It could be argued that you didn't have to kill anyone in that game either. You'd end up with whole levels of guards running around yelling at you.

In Thief, killing was only forbidden at the highest difficulty level or in certain missions. I killed all the time. To me it was just more fun. I would prefer to sneak up on a guard and blackjack him if I could and then stab him. Or just shoot him with arrows from a hiding place and watch him try to find me. Those basic interactions, to me, were what made the game fun. And listening to the guards talk.

The missions as a whole were a yawn-fest for me. I always thought that was a dumb idea even in an FPS. For me the best kind of action game is when you have some kind of larger overall goal, like escaping from a compound as in the whole Wolfenstein series. Although I tried to play RTCW and became so bored after 30 minutes that I felt like going to sleep. Even with a larger goal (and a more compelling one than just fetching some particular item) the repetitiveness still gets to me.

Why should I want to complete the mission anyway? What was my reward? Not enough to motivate me. It was not like there was any real narrative that could be moved forward by completing the mission. In general I hate following orders in a game. Feels too much like work. It would be much more interesting to stab the guy giving me the orders and then deal with the consequences.

I hated not having the freedom to kill someone if I needed or wanted to. To me, arbitrarily limiting what I can or cannot do to accomplish a goal feels wrong. If they don't want any killing just remove the arrows and swords from the game. And if you accidentally kill someone you have to start over? That has too much of an arcade game feel to it for me.

And dumbed down? Why?

I guess because they were strapped for cash and wanted to embrace and extend and capture a wider audience to sell more copies. I call it dumbed down because it was quite clear that that was precisely how LGS thought of it. They wanted to make it more accessible to a larger audience than a Dark Camelot RPG would have been. And they also wanted something that was much cheaper to make and that had a much shorter production time than an RPG. Basically they were after money. They were worried about their survival as a company, and justifiably so it turned out. And if they had wanted to just make an action game they shouldn't have originally announced it as an RPG. They disappointed a lot of fans. It was truly unforgivable IMO to get our hopes up like that. So forgive me if I am judging Thief a little too harshly.

Where's the strategy, the story, the variety of play? I found sneaking around to be fun for a while, but pretty limited. Hide in shadows. Hide in shadows. Hide in shadows. Ooh, I can shoot that torch with my water arrow and have more shadows to hide in. Sure, you could sneak up on a guard and blackjack him, but that is getting dangerously close to 'combat'. It seemed more like just part of a game. Move, hide, shoot some arrows, blackjack someone. Rinse, repeat. Not very complicated. What little 'story' there was, your actions had no effect on. Like the backstory for Doom. Arx Fatalis, for instance, had a limited form of sneaking, but it was just one aspect of play in the overall stats and story RPG dynamic. It took (stat-based) skill to shoot the arrows well. A skill you could improve.

To be fair, I don't know about Thief 1. I gave up at level 2 because of the zombies.

Haha. Yeah. I also didn't like the missions involving the undead. I mean, make up your fracking minds about the setting already. Damn stupid of them. In Thief 2 they did realize their mistake in that regard (how could they not have seen that before release), but I found some of the level design in the original Thief to be more interesting. They actually had a great setting. They should have made better use of it. But I guess that would have been too expensive.

Thief 2, on the other hand, was a masterpiece.

Actually I didn't play Thief 2 very much when it was released. I was already so burnt out on Thief 1. And the game play seemed basically the same. I will have to give it another try based on your rave review. But these days I find those simple game dynamics start boring me pretty quickly.

 

[Lumpy]

So Arx Fatalis had limited sneaking, but it was governed by a skill you could improve. Big fucking deal. Skills aren't the epitome of brainy gameplay. Even if Thief weren't that great as a game, it would still be important because it properly implemented a game mechanic which had previously been used as a half-assed alternative.
But in my opinion, the gameplay was great. And at least in Thief 2, many levels were pretty non-linear, allowing original approaches to problems. And it did require some thinking, probably why it didn't sell that well.
And if Looking Glass really wanted to make a cheap action game that sold well, they probably would have made one. And stayed in business for that matter.

 

[Drakron]

Thief along with MGS started the whole "stealth" games, Splinter Cell owns more to Thief that to MGS.

Thief was about stealth mechanics, "action" was a alternative for when screwing up but saying Thief is a action game is ... well its no MGS in that department.

 

[gc051360]

Check mate again sirs....pre-release Oblivion, the interviews and previews seemed to suggest that the game was good....it in fact was not. Check mate.

 

[Chip]

you should definetely play Thief 1 as it is far better than thief 2. At least try levels 3 and 5. Not to mention there's all of 3 zombies in level 2 and they move at the speed of mollassess so theres no reason you shoudlnt be able to get by them.

 

[Section8]

If they wanted to invent their own genre they could at least have come up with a better name for it. Sneaker just sounds silly to me. Would 'hider' have been any better? What about a 'shadow' game? That also doesn't sound very good. Maybe a 'stealth' game? That sounds better to me. And anyway, the Thief games were really the only ones that would fit into that genre. If it is a real genre I think it needs to be considered a sub-genre of action games.

Whoa there. If action games are analogious to action movies, Thief is way closer to a thriller. But in any case, who gives a fuck about what genre Thief belongs in. It was something really unique and special at the time, and even now it stands head and shoulders above most of the games that have been derived from it.

I don't buy the idea that an action game isn't an action game just because you don't have to kill anyone (although I did all the time). Did Donkey Kong involve combat? Or Frogger? Those are considered action games.

They're considered action games because they share the same dependence on player reflexes and dexterity. Regardless of the stylistic wrapper, we're talking about games that favour quick reaction as opposed to deep thought and consideration.

Could they have invented their own genres? They could have said, "Don't call it an action game. It is a ground breaking new form of play called a jumping game." Both games did involve jumping.

You may be interested to know that side-scrolling games with an emphasis on actions like jumping do indeed have their own genre.

Sneaking should, IMO, just be considered one aspect of an action game.

Why? Stealth based gameplay, like Thief offers is about timing, patience, problem-solving and spatial awareness. Action gameplay is more about reaction speed and master of the human-machine interface. A traditional FPS has more in common with a racing game than Thief.

In Thief, killing was only forbidden at the highest difficulty level or in certain missions. I killed all the time. To me it was just more fun. I would prefer to sneak up on a guard and blackjack him if I could and then stab him. Or just shoot him with arrows from a hiding place and watch him try to find me. Those basic interactions, to me, were what made the game fun. And listening to the guards talk.

Well for others, the challenge of ghosting a mission is what makes the game fun. Different strokes and all that.

The missions as a whole were a yawn-fest for me. I always thought that was a dumb idea even in an FPS. For me the best kind of action game is when you have some kind of larger overall goal, like escaping from a compound as in the whole Wolfenstein series.

Well, that may be, but some of us like a bit of variety beyond "Get to the <s>Chopper!</s> End of Level". Since the "repetitiveness still gets to you", how is a linear chain of levels with an identical goal and the same basic gameplay a better approach than fully scripted mission goals to ensure a challenge?

Why should I want to complete the mission anyway? What was my reward? Not enough to motivate me.

How is "Find a way to steal <artifact>" any less motivating than "Find the exit"? What's your motivation for playing any game? Abiding by the limitations of the game is a given, and the real motivator ought to be the enjoyment the player gets from interacting with the game. Any player hungry for a competent narrative that can compare with more traditional storytelling media such as literature or film is going to starve.

I will agree that trying to force rather than compell the player's motives is a terrible thing for RPGs, where allowing the player to evoke their own personality is a core facet of the genre, but I don't see it being as much of a problem in other types of game if an artificial imposition enhances the challenge of the game.

I don't hear many people bitching that bishops can only move diagonally, or that pawns can't move backward, because a game of chess with only queens wouldn't be fun.

It was not like there was any real narrative that could be moved forward by completing the mission.

Didn't get the cutscenes with your copy?

I hated not having the freedom to kill someone if I needed or wanted to. To me, arbitrarily limiting what I can or cannot do to accomplish a goal feels wrong. If they don't want any killing just remove the arrows and swords from the game. And if you accidentally kill someone you have to start over? That has too much of an arcade game feel to it for me.

Or, alternatively they could just remove the restriction on killing for lower difficulty settings. Wait...

 

[bylam]

They delivered whaqt they promised. Stop fuckin' bullshit. However, some people's perception s are so skewered that they think Bethesda promised soemthing they didn't. They may have read Bethesda's hyp pre release; but I doubt they truly understood it and if they did likely ignored it.

Like the Codexers who bashed the hype pre release yet bought the game anyways, and found out when they did they hated the game just like they thought they would.

R00fles!

It was pretty hard to misunderstand that pre-release radiant AI video. Are you saying that what he said/what happened in that video was NOT a misrepresentation of the AI in the final product?

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Could somebody make a PR-speak to English translator? Thanks.

 

[HardCode]

I would say that the real death knell of anything imaginative or noteworthy in gaming was gaming becoming massive. Every single realm of art or entertainment that devolved in some way, did so because it became massive - or "popular."

The Sage has imparted some wisdom. I think that many people here should take heed. It's not just PC games ... it's also movies, music, etc.

Wonder why the price of movie tickets keeps rising? Because there is rarely anything worth seeing anymore. Even cable/satellite TV would be worthless if it wasn't for the The History Channel, TV Land, and HBO Original Series like Sopranos and Rome, since when the shit movies hit cable, they still aren't worth watching.

What musicians still sell more CDs every week than anyone else? Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd.

What RPG games are still the best? No need to answer (pre-emption: Volourn, it isn't NWN or NWN2).

 

[psycojester]

So thats the solution then?

We wait for Byrce to die and have the codex inherit all his pensioner gold. Which we then use to fund the building of a Codex Space-shuttle and then establish the Codex colony on Titan. Thereby becoming the most elitist place in the universe WHERE EVERYTHING CHOICE HAS A CONSEQUENCE!. And Volourn is left out in space, where nobody can hear you r00fle

 

[Fez]

A Codex colony? Somehow I doubt that sausage fest would last for long.

 

[Vault Dweller]

To be really classy, we'd need to have a queen or at least an attention whore princess. So, Volourn's definitely going.

 

[Texas Red]

Volourn would be the guy who freaks out and runs in to the abandoned tunnels of a former colony. We hear a scream. Later on he turns up as a half monster half Volourn beast, trying to kill us.

We get killed one by one by the mysterious aliens, except me and a damnsel in distress who is following me(possibly Ladonna, if shes hot). In the end I pilot back home in a spaceship and, through a window, watch as the colony explodes.

 

[Drakron]

...
R00fles! x10 ...

It was pretty hard to misunderstand that pre-release radiant AI video. Are you saying that what he said/what happened in that video was NOT a misrepresentation of the AI in the final product?

Bethsoft admitted they script the whole thing, that was no Radiant AI in that whole event (at E3 I believe) and they come up with "excuses" why the Radiant AI was not in the game.

Bottom is Bethsoft could not make Radiant AI but sure as hell hyped it until the game was released only admitting when we had ample proof that there was no such thing.

Anyone can draw their own conclusions from that ...

 

[Volourn]

"Volourn would be the guy who freaks out and runs"

Only cowards, and wussies run,. I am neither. I do not run.

 

[kingcomrade]

And Volourn is left out in space, where nobody can hear you r00fle

:D

 

[Hazelnut]

A Codex colony? Somehow I doubt that sausage fest would last for long.

Hmm, and I was assuming that we'd be able to bring spouses and offspring - sorry guys I'm out then.

 

[psycojester]

Bring the spouses can we please leave the kids thought. I hate being on any mode of transportation with small children and i'm pretty sure Titan is a fairly long drive..... unless you've got a teenage daughter, those we can certainly accomodate

 

[mr nobuddy]

What if the teens are emo retards?

 

[Fez]

At least they'll have a reason to cry and be depressed before the journey is over.

 

[psycojester]

In you push her face into the mattress you never have to see the tears. Plus i like the pale skin and black hair

 

[Dementia Praecox]

And Dementia, if you blow yourself up any further, you are going to explode.

What's that supposed to mean? Care to elaborate?

It's not like me or lumpy or ninja have any censor powers here. We just bitch about the bitching which is just as valid as bitching, or bitching about the bitching about the bitching. All of which is retarded, which some of the threads about actual news or concepts or RPG philosphy are NOT.

It's not like I've insulted your mothers either? Why this attack on me? As you said, I just bitch about your bitching about bitching. And there is something with the bitching:contributing-ratio, as Dark Underlord pointed out. You and Lumpy at least have something to lean on, whereas Mr. Ninja here just are making a fool out of himself. And I've clearly not stated anything contradictory to your last claim there?

As much as I dislike Demented I do agree that Naked Ninja or whatever is an annoying fuck. People enjoy voicing their annoyance with Pete, especially when every other site praises Oblivion and the forums are mostly filled with preteens thinking its the Second Coming of Christ.

 

[Naked Ninja]

whereas Mr. Ninja here just are making a fool out of himself.

Ahaha, you don't even get the irony of that statement, do you?

People enjoy voicing their annoyance with Pete, especially when every other site praises Oblivion and the forums are mostly filled with preteens thinking its the Second Coming of Christ.

Doing something just because every other site is doing the opposite is just as moronic as doing something because everyone else is doing it. Reverse dumbfuckery is still dumbfuckery.

As much as I dislike Demented I do agree that Naked Ninja or whatever is an annoying fuck.

Your opinion has been noted. And discarded.

I love the way forum arguments always degenerate to "my post count penis is bigger than your post count penis!". Really, I am thoroughly impressed by your awesome post counts, but this obsession you guys have is still silly no matter how many posts I have on this forum, 1 or 1 million.

 

[psycojester]

Your not getting this are you. Nobody cares what you say, Nobody cares what you think. If you don't like the way we bitch fuck off and start your own forum.

We're well aware that we're a collection of crotchety old dinosaurs roaring nostalgically about beloved tar pit of a genre we're happy that way.

 

[Naked Ninja]

You could be crotchety and angsty without being so damn repetitive. If you want to be an asshole, at least have some flair about it. Come up with some new fucking jokes, something. Pete Hines saying "Horse Armor", so very inspired!


And I'm well aware that I'm talking to a brick wall here, thanks. If you don't like the way I bitch about your bitching, applying your own logic, fuck off and stop reading my posts.